WT American Honey and other honey (etc) spirits

curious as to why this seems to be a big flop to many...and it seems, from the reviews i've found folks either hate it or love it. no in betweens!

how does this compare to other honey and/or bourbon-based spirits?

this is a wide (and perhaps almost unrelated) specturm for sure, but i can't help but think of this WT liqueur, Southern Comfort, Yukon Jack, Berenjaeger and that other polish honey spirit (i think it's called Krupnik or something like that).

also, doesn't the WT honey claim to be the only bourbon-based spirit?

is SComfort just a "whiskey" liqueur? hadn't had that since college....

Re: WT American Honey and other honey (etc) spirits

There have been other bourbon-based liqueurs in the past but now there's just Wild Turkey American Honey (WTAH) and, to a lesser extent, SOCO.

Southern Comfort's recipe was changed a few years ago so that it does now contain some bourbon. Yukon Jack is Canadian whiskey-based. Does it contain honey? I don't know. I think Wild Turkey's claim may be that all of the alcohol in its product is from bourbon, whereas SOCO is mostly GNS. Mead involves fermenting honey which WTAH does not. Honey is just added at the end for sweetening and flavor, so that's where it's not much like mead.

Wild Turkey, of course, puts the Wild Turkey name on it and the bourbon it uses is Wild Turkey. SOCO doesn't say so, but the bourbon it uses is Early Times (the bourbon, i.e., export, version).

The Wild Turkey product is a tasty liqueur. Where some people react badly to it is when they think it's a Wild Turkey bourbon, which it definitely is not. It's a completely different animal. But if you are expecting bourbon, well, WT submitted it to a competition I was judging, wrongly I think. When I hit it I knew exactly what it was, but it was a bit of a shock to be expecting to taste a bourbon and get that. I refused to judge it since it was a bourbon competition and WTAH is not a bourbon, it's a bourbon liqueur.

Re: Wild Turkey American Honey

I don't think SOCO tastes any different with the bourbon in it. Maybe it has a little more depth. The main thing is still apricot and sugar.

Yukon Jack tastes about the same.

I have to say I'm not a big cordials drinker. Just too damn sweet, most of them. When I worked on Southern Comfort, 20 years ago, I had to drink it and learned to like it, but after that period of obligation ended I seldom went back. Same thing happened when I worked on Miller Lite.

Re: Wild Turkey American Honey

Originally Posted by cowdery

I have to say I'm not a big cordials drinker. Just too damn sweet, most of them.

I tend to use liqueurs as cocktail ingredients, in combination with a base spirit such as whiskey, gin, or brandy - but sometimes I like a nip of a liqueur for something different. However, they are sweet enough that more than an ounce or so is enough for me.

Re: Wild Turkey American Honey

I just learned that Pernod-Ricard has big hopes for this product and that the reformulation that accompanied the renaming and packaging redesign reduced the honey flavor. Presently, all of the alcohol in the product is Wild Turkey bourbon, no GNS, and it's the last thing being made and bottled at Tyrone, since the rest of the bottling was moved to Fort Smith. They are positioning it as a Jagermeister alternative.

Re: Wild Turkey American Honey

i will have to try this eventually.

i do hope it isn't too sweet...i think i burned my appreciation for straight sweetness (no hints of it...!) with Limoncello.....i can barely take a sip of it anymore....unless it was to wash down some blackened redfish with tabasco....would take something like THAT to counteract that lemonhead taste!

but still, i think honey is a great part of most any liqueur formula.

andy

p.s.now how would you think American Honey might taste better if blended with some MORE WTurkey?! would this be"vatting"?

i've tried to find precise info on vatting and can only glean a sense of it from various posts...is vatting done in a bottle ... or can it be done in a glass? aside from the term in Scotch parlance (blending/vatting), can someone lead me to a thread that might answer the exactitudes of VATTING?

Re: Wild Turkey American Honey

Originally Posted by barturtle

There is at least one other of the bourbon liqueurs to try, Prichard's Sweet Lucy. I haven't had it, but it is of the apricot orange persuasion.

Sounds interesting. Sort of like a artisanal knock off of Southern Comfort. Prichard's Double Barreled Bourbon is available down state in my area but I've never seen the Sweet Lucy. At least that I recall. Janean occasionally uses SC in a couple different mixed drinks.